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ICARUS:Darpa's dissapearing drone program

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posted on Oct, 16 2015 @ 09:33 AM
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Those crazy folk over at darpa are at it again with the sci fi like tech.
They are studying a small self destructing supply drone, by building it with self dissolving polymers.




Many are familiar with Icarus from Greek mythology. The son of Daedalus, a master craftsman, Icarus and his father were imprisoned in the Labyrinth, a maze of his father’s creation meant to house the Minotaur. To escape, Daedalus fashioned two sets of wings from feathers and wax. He warned his son not to fly close to the sun, as the wax would melt. But, Icarus, giddy with his flight ability, didn’t heed his father’s advice. His flying apparatus melted, and he fell into the sea, meeting his death.

DARPA’s Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems (ICARUS) program is taking a cue from its Greek namesake. The program hopes to develop an aircraft capable of delivering small payloads—less than 3 lbs—and disappearing after mission completion. Potential payloads may contain additional batteries, communications devices or medical supplies.

“Vanishing delivery vehicles could extend military and civilian operational capabilities in extenuating circumstances where currently there is no means to provide additional support,” said Troy Ollson, program manager of ICARUS. “Inventing transient materials, devising ways of scaling up their production, and combining those challenges with the hard control and aerodynamic requirements to reach the precision and soft-landing specs we need here makes for a challenging and compelling engineering problem.”


That is crazy stuff, it will dissolve into pieces no larger than 100uM.


Currently, payloads are delivered via parachute-based delivery systems, which require packing-out, adding a time-consuming activity and weight to individuals’ loads.

“Following a night drop, the air delivery vehicle must completely, physically disappear within (4 hrs) of payload delivery or within 30 mins after morning civil twilight, whichever is earlier,” according to a solicitation notice from DARPA. “To be considered not visible to the naked eye, DARPA nominally quantifies physical disappearance, or transience, as producing remnants not exceeding 100 µm on the longest dimension.”

The aircraft must be able to be deployed from a stationary balloon 35,000 ft high, and cover a lateral distance of up to 150 km. Afterwards, it must drop its payload within 10 m of a GPS-programmed target. At its longest dimension, the aircraft can be no more than 3 m.

DARPA believes technology from the agency’s Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program can be integrated into ICARUS. The VAPR program sought to develop electronics capable of dissolving/self-destructing when triggered.

“With the progress made in VAPR, it became plausible to imagine building larger, more robust structures using these materials for an even wider array of applications,” said Olsson, who is also the program manager of VAPR. “And that led to the question, ‘What sorts of things would be even more useful if they disappeared right after we used them?’”

ICARUS’ two-phase program is scheduled for 26 months with $8 million in funding.


www.rdmag.com...

I have wondered why we haven't more robustly embraced UAV's for unit level resupply, they don't have to be fancy.





edit on p00000010k461052015Fri, 16 Oct 2015 09:46:21 -0500k by punkinworks10 because: content



posted on Oct, 16 2015 @ 11:29 AM
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a reply to: punkinworks10

In theory it sounds awesome.

I'm sure they won't find any nefarious uses for it, right?!



posted on Oct, 16 2015 @ 11:44 AM
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a reply to: EA006
No doubt,
Like a disappearing assination drones?



posted on Oct, 16 2015 @ 12:01 PM
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a reply to: EA006

I think this type of tech is in some way to prevent another Iranian RQ-170 hijack when matured enough. In stead of having the aircraft fly with self destructing payloads, the thing just dissolves on command. Safer and easier.



posted on Oct, 16 2015 @ 12:01 PM
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originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: EA006
No doubt,
Like a disappearing assination drones?


Very much like assassination drones. Or to drop chemical weapons on civvies and blame somebody else!



posted on Oct, 16 2015 @ 12:35 PM
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Ahhh, the ancillary research revelation as a result of nana-dust tech (that "officially" doesn't exist
)




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